Published:First published inRabochyNo. 8, September 12 (August 30), 1917.

      Signed:N. Lenin.

      Published according to theRabochytext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 25,

      pages287-288.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.  

      2002You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

TheAugust 20 issue ofRech, andRusskaya Volya, a newspaper
    founded with notoriously questionable money and recommending
    “socialist-minded” voters to vote forYedinstvoand for the
    Popular Socialists, have again published slanderous statements
    against me.

Theinformation comes, according to both papers, from the
      “War Ministry”, and “Rech”even assertsthat it is
    backed by “documentary evidence and numerous testimonies by
    individuals”.

Thelaw on libel in the press has virtually been suspended in
    Russia. Slanderers, especially those contributing to the bourgeois
    papers, have been granted complete freedom. They can come out in
    the papers anonymously, lie and slander as much as they please,
    and hide behind allegedly official reports not signed by any
    official—they can get away with anything! Those infamous
    slanderers, headed by Mr. Milyukov and his like, enjoy the
    privilege of immunity.

Theslanderers assert that I had certain relations with the
    Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine. Milyukov’s newspaper
    writes: “The German Government instructed Lenin to advocate
    peace.” “In Berlin,” it says, “there were two
    socialist meetings in which Lenin and Yoltukhovsky took part.”Rasskaya Volyaadds to the latter phrase: “Lenin stopped at
    Yoltukhovsky’s.”

SinceMr. Milyukov and other scoundrels like him—knights of
    the foul slander—are allowed to slander with impunity, all I
    can do is repeat that it is slander and again confront the knights
    of blackmail, who refer to witnesses, with a reference to a
    witness known to the masses.

Ihave known Basok, one of those active in the Union for the
    Liberation of the Ukraine, since 1906, when he was a Menshevik and
    attended the Stockholm Congress together with me. In the autumn of
    1914, or early 1915, when I was living in Berne, I received a
    visit at my home from the well-known Caucasian Menshevik Tria, who
    had come from Constantinople. He told me about Basok’s activity in
    the Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine, and of the connection
    between that Union and the German government. He handed me a
    letter from Basok, who expressed sympathy with me and said he
    hoped our views would become closer. I was so angry that I wrote
    an answer to Basok there and then, in the presence of Tria, and
    gave the letter to Tria asking him to pass it on since he was
    about to make another trip to Constantinople.

Inmy letter to Basok, I declared that since he was entering
    into relations with one of the imperialists, our ways parted for
    good and we had nothing in common.

Thatis all the “relations” I have ever had with the
    Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine.